Battered by a low-wage, de-industrialized and de-unionized economy, the white male working class voter helped elect tea party conservatives to the U.S. House in 2010 and could find solace watching Newt attack Obama as elite and aloof.

Many democrats believe that if Gingrich tops the ticket, his image and style as a snob and a fathead could cripple republican efforts to take the white house and congress.

But that could depend on Obama’s capacity to make the former house speaker look craggy, condescending and – above all – hypocritical.

Let’s hope that if Gingrich lands the nomination, Obama can neutralize his opponent’s appeal to the white working class and other pivotal voting blocks.

And, in the process, take real steps to redeem himself with America’s neglected workers.

We need to work to defeat Gingrich or whichever of the GOP Saturday Night Live look alikes manages to get the nomination; that means working to re-elect Obama, elect a more worker friendly Congress and keep pushing them to do the right thing, i.e. pass employeed free choice, pass a real jobs bill, tax the 1% or maybe the 5% (you get the idea!), bring the troops home and “reset” the US relationship with the rest of the planet–as the President suggested he wanted to do in his first campaign.